The Pope and the Garage Sale                                                                                    

 

    As I am driving to town, the radio is cranking BB King, “The Thrill is Gone.”  It is twenty miles to town. The dog and I are rolling through the wheat in order to sort through other folks’ stuff at various yard/garage sales so we can score some very basic furniture for my Mom.  

      Even with the radio blasting, I cannot escape the news. Pope John Paul has died. I remember there is a BB King connection. Here, let BB’s manager tell the tale:

      “On December 18, 1997, BB King had an audience with Pope John Paul II and performed at the fifth edition of the Vatican Christmas Concert on December 19, 1997, at the hall of Paolo VI. The aim of the concert was to remind the public throughout the world of the church of Rome's cherished project to build 50 new churches in the city suburbs as tangible fruit of the 2000 Jubilee.

     “King performed "Merry Christmas Baby" and "Christmas Celebration" on an all-star international program with the 84 piece Royal Monaco Orchestra, conducted by Renato Serio.

     “BB donated his services for this historic event; the Vatican picked up his airfare and hotel. King and his personal assistant Joe McClendon, were required to be at all parties and festivities and ate at the banquets. King sent copies of his albums to the Vatican prior to the performance and had to write out all the charts for the orchestra. There were two days of rehearsals. The concert was later shown on television around the globe, for over two billion people.

     “Prince Ranier of Monaco told BB King that there was only one thing wrong with the show. "It was only two songs," he said, "maybe next time you can play longer."

      “King presented the Pope with a guitar - a sister of Lucille. "The Pope said thank you for the guitar," reminisced King, "and he grabbed hold of it like he knew how to handle a guitar."

     "I heard from a friend," smiled King, "that after we left, the Pope strummed the guitar and played The Thrill Is Gone."

     Half an hour later, I am standing in front of a small kitchen table and four wooden chairs at a garage sale. Perfect size. Not bad shape, except for one small burn the size of a quarter, dead center in the tabletop, and one wobbly chair. Forty bucks. Worth it. As I turn to catch the eye of the woman divesting herself of surplus stuff, a short gal about my age, bobbed hair dyed the color of wheat stubble, clunker shoes, nuevo peasant blouse, plaid polyester pants, reaches out and rips the price tag off the table, then marches over to the saleswoman.

    “How much will for the table and chairs?”  She points back toward me and the goods.  

    “I think forty dollars”

     “Will you take thirty? My daughter is moving into a smaller place, and this would be perfect for her, but we can only afford thirty.”

     “Oh, sure, you can have it for thirty.”

      I stand dumbfounded, really wanting the table and chairs, feeling one-upped, slow on the draw, out-shopped. Should I jump into the process, offer the asking price, maybe even more?  No, I decide, there’s more than one table on the planet. Let the woman’s daughter dine in peace on her new, slightly scarred, thirty-dollar table.  

     Three sales and two hours later, I am in a lather from looking at broken, useless, ugly cast-offs from the lives of my fellow humans, with nothing in my truck. I had almost suckered into a good deal on a $300 pool table, but decided it wouldn’t fit in my bedroom. Oh, well, there is always the second-hand store option.

    The used-stuff emporium is housed in what once was a car parts store, a huge space rented to individual vendors on a commission basis. After wandering around through a stable of horse harness and a mausoleum of disfigured porcelain doll heads and a bone pile of decorative wooden plates and too many “vintage” Life Magazines from the 60’s, I stumble around a corner and there behold an exact duplicate of the table and chairs from the garage sale, with a pot of plastic flowers in the center.  Ninety-five dollars. I test the chairs. One is loose. Suspicion rears its ugly mug. I scoot the flowerpot over three inches. Sure enough, dead center in the tabletop is a quarter-sized burn. Both I and the lady who held the garage sale have been hoodwinked.

      A tall young woman with cornflower blue eyes is minding the store. Yes, the table and chairs are brand new, just came in an hour ago. No, the vendor is not on the premises. No, as far as she knows the woman who brought in the table has no children. I stare at my boots as I exit the store.

     The radio is still all about the Pope. On the home leg of the trip, I opt for Bob Dylan, who also played a concert for the Pope. At a concert in Bologna, Italy celebrating 23rd Italian National Eucharistic Congress, the Pope responded to Bob Dylan's performance of Blowin' in the Wind by answering the famous rhetorical question:  "How many roads must a man walk down?" with "Man has just one road to travel and that is with Christ." Not my cup of tea, but then I ain't the Pope.

    By time I get home, some of my offgepissedness has passed. Hey, its only a table and chairs. Peace, brother, peace. It is not my place to condemn the greedy, lying, maggot of a reseller to eternal perdition.  I’ll ask the Pope to do that from the grave. Like me, J.P. II was a peacenik who believed that greed is the real impediment to world peace. He opposed the invasion of Iraq. He, too, would’ve been very disappointed to move the flowerpot and uncover the woman’s money sickness. To quote from one of his ruminations on modern economic principles: 

   “Based on a purely economic conception of man, the free-market system considers profit and the law of the market as its only parameters, to the detriment of the dignity of and the respect due to individuals and peoples. At times this system has become the ideological justification for certain attitudes and behavior in the social and political spheres leading to the neglect of the weaker members of society. Indeed, the poor are becoming ever more numerous, victims of specific policies and structures which are often unjust.”